What Beats a Royal Flush? - Il cartaio (2004) Discussion

[–] guigui-paul 18 years ago

i know almost nothing at poker,but maybe Anna cheated to win?!
it is a good scene,with a fun use of music and the train bit at the end is great!

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[–] phousefunkfactory 18 years ago

I agree with you. It was a pretty good scene. Unfortunately, your comment does not help me though.

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[–] languid-2 18 years ago

i've not seen the movie, and am just browsing some other argento to possibly watch, but a royal flush is the best standard poker hand, and there is only one royal flush, 10 to the ace of the same suit, a lower straight of the same suit is just a straight flush. you would have to be playing with some kind of modified rules for a royal flush not to be the best hand.

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[–] guigui-paul 18 years ago

that's why the killer says at the end "a royal flush! you can't beat that!!"
so i think that Anna really cheated to beat the killer at his own game,or maybe the poker book of her father had slightly different rules of poker...

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[–] phousefunkfactory 18 years ago

To languid-2: A royal flush CAN be beaten if another royal flush is present. There is not just one royal flush, there are four because of the four suits. Spades is the highest. For example: 10-ACE of Diamonds is beaten by 10-ACE of Spades because spades is considered a "higher" suit. She didn't have this. She only had a straight flush (Ace-5 of Clubs). So I guess I am just supposed to accept that she cheated...?! That's retarted.

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[–] misfits475 18 years ago

No, in poker their is no rank in suit. wich means that a royal is a royal flush no matter what suit. it would be considered a split pot

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[–] god_of_thunder6969 18 years ago

There are European variations of certain games where a flush wheel is the highest hand, not a royal flush.

However, to my knowledge, the game they were playing didn't have that difference.

Chalk it up to a case of Deus Ex Machina.

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[–] JEL66 18 years ago

You could say she "cheated", though an outright absurd lie is a pretty lame way to cheat. I believe the point was that she was deliberately trying to fluster him by making outrageous statements that he hadn't anticipated, as she had already been doing. You remember the lessons from her father's book on Poker? Throw your oppnonent off balance. Argento wasn't rewriting the rules of Poker to suit the movie. She lied, period. The poker was unimportant in and of itself. What mattered was getting the key - that was the real game, and she won by making her opponent lose his cool and allow the key to fall into her reach.

Remember that he was cheating too: he had a spare key because he didn't intend to honor his own stakes.

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[–] guigui-paul 18 years ago

one explanation about "the card player"'s final scene here...:

http//www.darkdreams.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=8502

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[–] drdebacle 18 years ago

No, dude, a Royal Flush is the highest, period. And there is no higher suits in standard poker rules. If by chance 2 players both had Royal Flushes (which is probably only possible in 5 card Draw and Stud games and maybe a couple of others), it would be considered a split pot, a tie.

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[–] skorzenyus 18 years ago

not true necessarily - because jokers were used, it was possible for her to have 5 of a kind, which beats the royal flush. but from what I can see she didn't have 5 of a kind, so go figure

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[–] misace 18 years ago

of course a joker in poker is normal :)

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[–] argento1970 18 years ago

The whole purpose to her screaming she won was to throw him off. Remember he got angry, yelled the computer was wrong and turned off the computer before it can announce the winner. I thought about that too. But looking at the movie again, it was a pure mind game she did on him.

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[–] Moxmox 18 years ago

She said "the rules say the royal flush with the lowest cards wins." Being a poker player I diagree but, I'm not familiar with international rules. As far as screaming to throw him off she could have gone for the key at any time. We can speculate but only the writer knows the truth.

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[–] llmasucci 18 years ago

I think that when he sent the original email, it mentioned that the game had some kind of variant rules. The jokers being present was one of the variations, but I think they mentioned other differences. I'm not a poker player myself, so I didn't really follow what they were saying.

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[–] francesco_bc 18 years ago

Heh, you guys know nothing about poker :) j/k
Of course we know the truth !

"the rules say the royal flush with the lowest cards wins"

That's true.
A royal flush with lowest cards wins against a royal flush with the highest cards, middle cards win agains lowest cards and lose to highest.

Poker rules were thought so that there isn't an absolute 'best combination', a combination that beats every other, so that you can never be completely sure your cards cannot be beaten.
If this rule wasn't introduced, someone who has a royal flush of highest cards could bet anything he has and be completely sure he'd win. To prevent this from happening this rule has been introduced:
Again,
highest cards win against medium
medium win against lowest
lowest win against highest

Of course there's such a small chance of 2 royal flushes happening in the same game that few persons know this rule, but it has actually happened to me once and this is an official rule.

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[–] Pooman2084 18 years ago

Sorry, there can't be a 'lower' Royal Flush.

A Royal Flush is 10, J, Q, K, A

If you have a Royal Flush you are unbeatable. Bet your pot, your car and your mortgage, you can't lose (although it is feasable to split in 7 card etc).

You can have different ranks of straight flushes. In which case the highest str flush wins.

This is how we play in Europe and it is also how it's played in all international hold -em touries and online.

I think the cheating/flustering argument must be the only explanation.

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[–] francesco_bc 18 years ago

I'm in europe also (actually, in italy : ) ) and i've had the chance to play and discuss this with several pro. poker players.
Actually, it appears there's two or more variations of the official rules, as well as some mistranslation going on;
to my knowledge, any Straight Flush (as in: any sequence of 5 cards of the same suit) is called 'scala reale' in italy and in original poker rules. Actually, we don't even have an expression for "straight flush".

Apparently, according to international rules you're also right; there's only one "royal flush" and it's the highest combination of cards in a straight flush.

According to the poker players i know, though, the original rules are like i said:
You can have a 'scala reale' with;

A) 10, J, Q, K, A.

B) 9, 10, J, Q, K.

C) 8, 9, 10, J, Q.

provided all cards are the same suit of course.
In this case A beats B, B beats C but C beats A. Like i said, this has been decided so that you can never be sure you're unbeatable, and it's as official as it can get, and this is how poker is played in italy.
There's no cheating in the movie (hell, why go as far as giving her a straight flush if she was to win by cheating anyway ??) that's the game's rules. Or at least it is in some parts of the world :)

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[–] tonycom5 17 years ago

very interesting discussion here. Thanks to Francesco, there's some clarification to this mess. "Scala reale" is the Italian for straight flush and it's tranlsated as "royal flush." That's the problem. An American hearing some gibberish about the lowest card in a royal flush beating another royal flush makes no sense whatsoever. Royal flush is 10 to Ace of the same suit, period. There is no difference from one royal flush to the other.

As far as the scala reale rules go, so that someone with a royal flush can't be sure his/her hand can't be beaten, is that really necessary? I don't play poker too much but I would imagine that a royal flush is a rarity. And even if you get one, there's the chance that everyone else will fold or the pot will be otherwise paltry. In poker, you never really know that your hand is the best anyway. If you have four kings, a great hand, you can still get beaten by four A's. The odds may be on your side, but there's always that chance that you could be raising the pot only to make some other guy richer. If you do get that royal flush, I think you deserve to win and not have to worry about getting underhanded by some new kind of rule. (There's always the chance, too, that you may have to split the pot with another suit's royal flush; or that your opponent may have a gun!)

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[–] gridoon 18 years ago

Right after she said "the rules say the royal flush with the lowest cards wins",
he said "so, you read your father's little book, didn't you? Well it's wrong!". So I'm guessing it's a matter of controversy or at least it was MADE to look like a matter of controversy in the film. Francesco_bc's post makes quite a bit of sense, though.

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[–] Nelly86 17 years ago

But she didn't have a royal flush. She had a straight flush.

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[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] sevvo73 18 years ago

She was dealt a straight flush without a joker (or any other wild-card):
Ace of clubs
Two of clubs
Three of clubs
Four of clubs
Five of clubs
(arguably the lowest possible straight)

He was dealt a royal straight flush with a wild-card:
Ten of hearts
Jack of hearts
King of hearts
Ace of hearts
Joker (used as a queen of hearts/ace)
(arguably the highest possible straight)

How did she win?

Keep in mind that the conceit exists that most houses always assume that a wild is interpreted as an ace first--in addition to it being required to complete a winning-hand. In games where wild cards are permitted, a "natural" royal flush (with one ace) can be beaten by a nearly-identical royal flush with a wild (accepted as having 2 aces (hence "betterer"))--although this may depend on the particular house's rules.

Considering that jokers tended to show up throughout the film, presumably Argento was clubbing the audience over the head with the whole "anything-can-happen" device.

Still, using wild cards has engendered a great deal of debate, and explains why most professional card-houses do not permit them.

This is how she won:

It had nothing to do with a "real" winning hand, or combinations of natural and wild card hands. She simply rattled his nerves to the point where he was convinced that the "house rules" dictate that the lowest straight wins. It was a kind of weird/cerebral bluff. This refers to her poker-strategy book encouraging the player to unsettle the other player.

Simple.

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[–] oprtvdog 18 years ago

she said the rules the computer had are that the royal flush with lower cards wins but thats a goof the only royal flush is
TJQKA

so the guy configured the games so that a straight flush beats a royal

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[–] hooligan123 16 years ago

The simplest answer is that its a terrible movie with a terrible ending

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[–] djsnafu23 16 years ago

I will vry muchh second that statement enthusiastically

myspace.com/bankrupteuropeans

Coz lifes too short to listen to Madlib

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